Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, now owned by Facebook Inc, has announced plan to leave the messaging service company.
He made the disclosure in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
Acton said, “After 8 years at WhatsApp, I have decided to move on and start a new chapter in my life.
”I am very fortunate at my age to have the flexibility to take new
risks and focus on what I’m passionate about. I’ve decided to start a
non-profit focused at the intersection of nonprofit, technology and
communications.
”It’s something I’ve thought about for a while, and now it’s time
to just focus and execute. I’ll have more to share in the coming months.
”This decision is, of course, a tough one. I’m proud of what our
team has accomplished in only a few years, and it’s humbling to see that
so many people rely on WhatsApp every day.”
A Stanford alumnus, Acton co-founded WhatsApp with Ukrainian
immigrant Jan Koum in 2009. The duo worked at Yahoo before starting
WhatsApp.
They hit big in 2014 when Facebook agreed to pay $19 billion to buy
it, although the price ended up rising to $22 billion thanks to
share-based components to the deal.
WhatsApp is the world’s most-used messaging app today with over one
billion monthly users, that’s more than double the 450 million it had at
the date of the acquisition.